Beyond the Great Oblivion

CHAPTER XXVI. “YOU SPEAK ENGLISH!”

Even in his pain and rage and fear, Stern did not lose his wits. Too great the peril, he subconsciously realized, for any false step now. Despite the fact that the stone prison could measure no more than some ten feet in diameter, he knew that in its floors some pit or fissure might exist, frightfully deep, for their destruction.

And other dangers, too, might lie hidden in this fearful place. So, restraining himself with a strong effort, he stood there motionless a few seconds, listening, trying to think. Severe now the pain from his lashed wrists had grown, but he no longer felt it. Strange visions seemed to dance before his eyes, for weakness and fever were at work upon him. In his ears still sounded, though muffled now, the constant hissing roar of the great flame, the mysterious and monstrous jet of fire which seemed to form the center of this unknown, incomprehensible life in the abyss.

“Merciful Heavens!” gasped he. “That fire--those skeletons--this black cell--what can they mean?” He found no answer in his bewildered brain. Once more he called, “Beatrice! Beatrice!” but only the close echo of the prison replied.

He listened, holding his breath in sickening fear. Was there, in truth, some waiting, yawning chasm in the cell, and had she, thrust rudely forward, been hurled down it? At the thought he set his jaws with terrible menace and swore, to the last drop of his blood, vengeance on these inhuman captors.

But as he listened, standing there with bound hands in the thick gloom, he seemed to catch a slow and sighing sound, as of troubled breathing. Again he called. No answer. Then he understood the truth. And, unable to grope with his hands, he swung one foot slowly, gently, in the partial circumference of a circle.

At first he found nothing save the smooth and slippery stone of the floor, but, having shifted his position very cautiously and tried again, he experienced the great joy of feeling his sandaled foot come in contact with the girl's prostrate body.

Beside her on the floor he knelt. He could not free his hands, but he could call to her and kiss her face. And presently, even while the joy of this discovery was keen upon him, obscuring the hot rage he felt, she moved, she spoke a few vague words, and reached her hands up to him; she clasped him in her arms.

And there in the close, fetid dark, imprisoned, helpless, doomed, they kissed again, and once more--though no word was spoken--plighted their love and deep fidelity until the end.

“Hurt? Are you hurt?” he panted eagerly, as she sat up on the hard floor and with her hands smoothed back the hair from his hot, aching head.

“I feel so weak and dizzy,” she answered. “And I'm afraid--oh, Allan, I'm afraid! But, no, I'm not hurt.”

“Thank God for that!” he breathed fervently. “Can you untie these infernal knots? They're almost cutting my hands off!”

“Here, let me try!”

And presently the girl set to work; but even though she labored till her fingers ached, she could not start the tight and water-soaked ligatures.

“Hold on, wait a minute,” directed he. “Feel in my right-hand pocket. Maybe they forgot to take my knife.”

She obeyed.

“They've got it,” she announced. “Even if they don't know the meaning of revolvers, they understand knives all right. It's gone.”

“Pest!” he ejaculated hotly. Then for a moment he sat thinking, while the girl again tried vainly to loosen the hard-drawn knots.

“Can you find the iron door they shoved us through?” asked he at length.

“I'll see!”

He heard her creeping cautiously along the walls of stone, feeling as she went.

“Look out!” he warned. “Keep testing the floor as you go. There may be a crevice or pit or something of that kind.”

All at once she cried: “Here it is! I've found it!”

“Good! Now, then, feel it all over and see if there's any rough place on it. Any sharp edge of a plate, or anything of that kind, that I could rub the cords on.”

Another silence. Then the girl spoke.

“Nothing of that kind here,” she answered depairingly. “The door's as smooth as if it had been filed and polished. There's not even a lock of any kind. It must be fastened from the outside in some way.”

“By Heaven, this is certainly a hard proposition!” exclaimed the engineer, groaning despite himself. “What the deuce are we going to do now?”

For a moment he remained sunk in a kind of dull and apathetic respair.

But suddenly he gave a cry of joy.

“I've got it!” he exclaimed. “Your revolver, quick! Aim at the opposite wall, there, and fire!”

“Shoot, in here?” she queried, astonished. “Why--what for?”

“Never mind! Shoot!”

Amazed, she did his bidding. The crash of the report almost deafened them in that narrow room. By the stabbing flare of the discharge they glimpsed the black and shining walls, a deadly circle all about them.

“Again?” asked she.

“No. That's enough. Now, find the bullet. It's somewhere on the floor. There's no pit; it's all solid. The bullet--find the bullet!”

Questioning no more, yet still not understanding, she groped on hands and knees in the impenetrable blackness. The search lasted more than five minutes before her hand fell on the jagged bit of metal.

“Ah!” cried she. “Here it is!”

“Good! Tell me, is the steel jacket burst in any such way as to make a jagged edge?”

A moment's silence, while her deft fingers examined the metal. Then said she:

“I think so. It's a terribly small bit to saw with, but--”

“To work, then! I can't stand this much longer.”

With splendid energy the girl attacked the tough and water-soaked bonds. She worked half an hour before the first one, thread by thread yielding, gave way. The second followed soon after; and now, with torn and bleeding fingers, she released the final bond.

“Thank Heaven!” he breathed as she began chafing his numb wrists and arms to bring the circulation back again; and presently, when he had regained some use of his own hands, he also rubbed his arms.

“No great damage done, after all,” he judged, “so far as this is concerned. But, by the Almighty, we're in one frightful fix every other way! Hark! Hear those demons outside there? God knows what they're up to now!”

Both prisoners listened.

Even through the massive walls of the circular dungeon they could hear a dull and gruesome chant that rose, fell, died, and then resumed, seemingly in unison with the variant roaring of the flame.

Thereto, also, an irregular metallic sound, as of blows struck on iron, and now and then a shrill, high-pitched cry. The effect of these strange sounds, rendered vague and unreal by the density of the walls, and faintly penetrating the dreadful darkness, surpassed all efforts of the imagination.

Beatrice and Stern, bold as they were, hardened to rough adventurings, felt their hearts sink with bodings, and for a while they spoke no word. They sat there together on the floor of polished stone--perceptibly warm to the touch and greasy with a peculiarly repellent substance--and thought long thoughts which neither one dared voice.

But at length the engineer, now much recovered from his pain and from the oppression of the lungs caused by the compressed air, reached for the girl's hand in the dark.

“Without you where should I be?” he exclaimed. “My good angel now, as always!”

She made no answer, but returned the pressure of his hand. And for a while silence fell between them there--silence broken only by their troubled breathing and the cadenced roaring of the huge gas-well flame outside the prison wall.

At last Stern spoke.

“Let's get some better idea of this place,” said he. “Maybe if we know just what we're up against we'll understand better what to do.”

And slowly, cautiously, with every sense alert, he began exploring the dungeon. Floor and walls he felt of, with minute care, reaching as high as he could and eagerly seeking some possible crevice, some promise--no matter how remote--of ultimate escape.

But the examination ended only in discouragement. Smooth almost as glass the walls were, and the floor as well, perhaps worn down by countless prisoners.

The iron door, cleverly let into the wall, lay flush with it, and offered not the slightest irregularity to the touch. So nicely was it fitted that not even Stern's finger-nail could penetrate the joint.

“Nothing doing in the escape line,” he passed judgment unwillingly. “Barbarians these people certainly are, in some ways, but they've got the arts of stone and iron working down fine. I, as an engineer, have to appreciate that, and give the remote descendants of our race credit for it, even if it works our ruin. Gad, but they're clever, though!”

Discouraged, in spite of all his attempted optimism, he sought the girl again, there in the deep and velvet dark. To himself he drew her; and, his arm about her sinuous, supple body, tried to comfort her with cheering speech.

“Well, Beatrice, they haven't got us yet! We're better off, on the whole, than we had any right to hope for, after having fallen one or two hundred miles--maybe five hundred, who knows? If I can manage to get a word or two with these confounded barbarians, I'll maybe save our bacon yet! And, at worst--well, we're in a mighty good little fort here. I pity anybody that tries to come in that door and get us.”

“Oh, Allan--those skeletons, those headless skeletons!” she whispered; and in his arms he felt her shudder with unconquerable fear.

“I know; but they aren't going to add us to their little collection, you mark my words! These men are white; they're our own kind, even though they have slid back into barbarism. They'll listen to reason, once I get a chance at them.”

Thus, talking of the abyss and of their fall--now of one phase, now another, of their frightful position--they passed an hour in the stifling dark.

And, joining their observations and ideas, they were able to get some general idea of the conditions under which these incredible folk were dwelling.

From the warmth of the sea and the immense quantities of vapor that filled the abyss, they concluded that it must be at a tremendous depth in the earth--perhaps as far down as Stern's extreme guess of five hundred miles--and also that it must be of very large extent.

Beatrice had noted also that the water was salt. This led them to the conclusion that in some way or other, perhaps intermittently, the oceans on the surface were supplying the subterranean sea.

“If I'm not much mistaken,” judged the engineer, “that tremendous maelstrom near the site of New Haven--the cataract that almost got us, just after we started out--has something very vital to do with this situation.

“In that case, and if there's a way for water to come down, why mayn't there be a way for us to climb up? Who knows?”

“But if there were,” she answered, “wouldn't these people have found it, in all these hundreds and hundreds of years?”

They discussed the question, pro and con, with many another that bore on the folk--this strange and inexplicable imprisonment, the huge flame at the center of the community's life, the probable intentions of their captors, and the terrifying rows of headless skeletons.

“What those mean I don't know,” said Stern. “There may be human sacrifice here, and offerings of blood to some outlandish god they've invented. Or these relics may be trophies of battle with other peoples of the abyss.

“To judge from the way this place is fortified, I rather think there must be other tribes, with more or less constant warfare. The infernal fools! When the human race is all destroyed, as it is, except a few handfuls of albino survivors, to make war and kill each other! It's on a par with the old Maoris of New Zealand, who practically exterminated each other--fought till most of the tribes were wiped clean out and only a remnant was left for the British to subdue!”

“I'm more interested in what they're going to do with us now,” she answered, shuddering, “than in how many or how few survive! What are we going to do, Allan? What on earth can we do now?”

He thought a moment, while the strange chant, dimly heard, rose and fell outside, always in unison with the gigantic flame. Then said he:

“Do? Nothing, for the immediate present. Nothing, except wait, and keep all the nerve and strength we can. No use in our shouting and making a row. They'd only take that as an admission of fear and weakness, just as any barbarians would. No use hammering on the iron door with our revolver-butts, and annoying our white brothers by interrupting their song services.

“Positively the only thing I can see to do is just to make sure both automatics are crammed full of cartridges, keep our wits about us, and plug the first man that comes in through that door with the notion of making sacrifices of us. I certainly don't hanker after martyrdom of that sort, and, by God! the savage that lays hands on you, dies inside of one second by the stop-watch!”

“I know, boy; but against so many, what are two revolvers?”

“They're everything! My guess is that a little target practice would put the fear of God into their hearts in a most extraordinary manner!”

He tried to speak lightly and to cheer the girl, but in his breast his heart lay heavy as a lump of lead.

“Suppose they don't come in, what then?” suddenly resumed Beatrice. “What if they leave us here till--”

“There, there, little girl! Don't you go borrowing any trouble! We've got enough of the real article, without manufacturing any!”

Silence again, and a long, dark, interminable waiting. In the black cell the air grew close and frightfully oppressive. Clad as they both were in fur garments suitable to outdoor life and to aeroplaning at great altitudes, they were suffering intensely from the heat.

Stern's wrists and arms, moreover, still pained considerably, for they had been very cruelly bruised with the ropes, which the barbarians had drawn tight with a force that bespoke both skill and deftness. His need of some occupation forced him to assure himself, a dozen times over, that both revolvers were completely filled. Fortunately, the captors had not known enough to rob either Beatrice or him of the cartridge-belts they wore.

How long a time passed? One hour, two, three?

They could not tell.

But, overcome by the vitiated air and the great heat, Beatrice slept at last, her head in the man's lap. He, utterly spent, leaned his back against the wall of black and polished stone, nodding with weariness and great exhaustion.

He, too, must have dropped off into a troubled sleep, for he did not hear the unbolting of the massive iron cell-door.

But all at once, with a quick start, he recovered consciousness. He found himself broad awake, with the girl clutching at his arm and pointing.

With dazzled eyes he stared--stared at a strange figure standing framed in a rectangle of blue and foggy light.

Even as he shouted: “Hold on, there! Get back out o' that, you!” and jerked his ugly pistol at the old man's breast--for very aged this man seemed, bent and feeble and trembling as he leaned upon an iron staff--a voice spoke dully through the half-gloom, saying:

“Peace, friends! Peace be unto you!”

Stern started up in wild amaze.

From his nerveless fingers the pistol dropped. And, as it clattered on the floor, he cried:

“English? You speak English? Who are you? English! English! Oh, my God!”